No matter what I do I can't gain significant body fat. If I fight my body very hard with an insane 4,000+kcal diet I can push it out of it's normal 9/10% body fat range, but if I back off it drops back down. On the same note it's just as hard for me to drop my body fat below that 9/10% range. Adding 1 day of cardio in seems to alter that by 1% or so, more cardio maybe 2%, but my knees start to suffer.

As long as I keep my lifting up, and take a handful of moderate sized walks a week; I stay lean as hell. I just don't understand how slamming my body with thousands of calories does absolutely nothing and all I gain is muscle.

I don't really wanna get ripped six pack abs, it's very hard work and when I try and get leaner I tank my metabolism and end up weak with no energy and shitty lifts; and my body seems to like where it is now.

Here's a few recent pics, 6 months of hardcore training. I'm at about 155# from September 2012, came from 145#.

Cellar Yeti wrote:No matter what I do I can't gain significant body fat....

As long as I keep my lifting up, and take a handful of moderate sized walks a week; I stay lean as hell. I just don't understand how slamming my body with thousands of calories does absolutely nothing and all I gain is muscle.

I would be very happy to exchange your problem of an awesomely effective metabolism for mine that always stays sluggish and puts fat on easily.

Have you had your thyroid levels checked to see if you might possibly have hyperthyroidism? Just one possibility, probably a longshot but it would be similar in effect to what you are describing. Easy for any doc to check your T3 and T4 levels with a quick blood test, might want to have it checked someday just to see!

But otherwise, you might just be blessed with a metabolism that most people would pay big money for if it were possible. All I can suggest is that, now that you know your "sweet spot" for how much you ca eat to maintain as well as what it takes to gain with a bit of fat added, best thing to do would be to experiment with various foods and macronutient ratios for how you can get those extr calories until you find a way to make it work the way you want without the downside of feeling like crap from constantly eating. Try making some higher calorie "weight gainer" shakes with fruit and protein that you tend to fare well with for being easy to digest, maybe throw in some oil, and swap it out for a more filling solid meal to not feel as stuffed. Or, if you normally make up those extra calories to get above 4000 with carbohydrates, change then out for protein and unsaturated fats for a bit and see if you feel better. Lots of things you can try with tweaking your diet to hopefully find a way to get that balance you're looking for.

And, as always, great pics and you've definitely built a good physique over the past year or two. Keep it up, and remember, a fast metabolism is typically a GOOD thing!

"A 'hardgainer' is merely someone who hasn't bothered to try enough different training methods to learn what is actually right for their own damned body." - anonymous

That's a good idea, I want to have my testosterone levels checked as well as my b12 and iron.

The thing about me eating that much is it doesn't touch my appetite. I can and have eaten upwards of 6,000kcal without getting full; 4,000kcal doesn't even satisfy me. The problem isn't eating that much, it's affording all that food.

Cellar Yetti, can you infect me with your hyper functioning metabolism? :-p Seriously though, if you're just looking for a quick fix, why not try a dirty bulk with lots of cake, ice cream, chips etc? I mean obviously you can't live like that for many weeks at a time without crashing, so perhaps alternate between your usual diet and a dirty bulk? Other than that, nice back dude

(1) It looks great as it is. Move to the tropics, and you'll never need to wear a shirt.

(2) The model-actor set ALWAYS gain fat through avocados... as it is a relatively healthy way to eat way too much fat. Yeah, doughnuts also work... and vegan doughnuts exist... but avocados are the shortcut.

(3) Unlike the model-actor set, Sumo wrestlers use another trick: going to sleep immediately after eating that fat. Your body will convert more energy to fat if you eat just before sleeping (and this is why people advise you NOT to do this). Looking to Sumo wrestlers for health advice = bad idea. However, the science behind this method seems solid.

(4) "Cellar Yeti" itself is such a compelling name, that I really wonder if it was already used as the title of a song, or as the name of a rock band or something like that.

Thanks. I love avocados, they grow wild here where I live which is awesome. One of the county parks I get free access to has a ton of wild avocado trees. Someone once said that 'cellar' is the most phonetically beautiful word in our language.

I ended up burning like 1,000kcal today working and weightlifting so I ended up at 4,500kcal, still short though. Oh well.

Well the truth is that if you were very skinny as a child or in your teens, you won't get fat as an adult either. That's because the fat cells in your body stops multiplying after your teens and after that they just grow or shrink. Or at least that's what the scientists say these days.

I know because I too was and still am skinny and even with a dirty diet it takes months to collect any extra weight.

I would say that if your tests look normal it'll probably be something you have very little control and you just have to get used to being a lean and mean Cellar Yeti.

(I must resist the temptation of making sexually assaulting comments about the hotness of your wide back and something about day dreams but you can figure out the rest yourself...)

Hahaha the grass is always greener. Instead of saying I've tried everything, research and find out what you haven't tried. There will always be something, and someone that has already done, and putting on body fat is not difficult. Consider yourself lucky and keep eating those healthy fats like avocados and coconuts.

Re: "Well the truth is that if you were very skinny as a child or in your teens, you won't get fat as an adult either"

No, this is not science.

You can meet plenty of folks who survived long-term famine during their entire teenage/childhood years, and who are now fat (Cambodia is an easy place to meet such folks) --after having grown up with real malnutrition and emaciation. If this guy was "very skinny" but not living in a refugee camp, there would be no medical/scientific basis for any connection to his current "problem" gaining fat (although, we all agree, there are worse problems to have, given that the guy is in amazing shape, etc.).

Most of the myths about skinny people gaining weight more slowly than people who are (i) already fat, or (ii) recently-were-fat (but lost weight for a short period of time), actually relate to "the flora and fauna" of the digestive tract (i.e., what bacteria you've got, and how well-adjusted the whole system is to converting food into fat on that basis).

Your "flora and fauna" really do adapt to your diet --and they can change significantly within weeks and months (i.e., not requiring years).

Aside from bacteria, most of the other issues are unlikely to impact vegans. If you eat a huge quantity of really greasy food (simultaneously, and with the right consistency, etc.), you can have food (literally) slide through your intestines without being digested properly. Given that you're vegan, this is unlikely to be your experience unless you've got a very peculiar mode of binge-eating going on. Alcohol is another strange exception, but, again, given the photographs, it's unlikely that this guy has destroyed his ability to digest properly with hard liquor, etc.

All of the research that went into debunking "The Atkins Diet" (known under many other names as well) re-enforced the already-well-established scientific equation of subtracting calories burned from calories eaten. With few exceptions, the other factors mentioned are pretty minor and only slightly modify the equation (the state of the bacteria in your digestive tract, etc., nudge you a few percentage points around --although this effect has now been studied and measured, and is apparently significant in some cases of "bouncing back" after flunking out of a diet, and rapidly re-gaining weight, etc.).

I have actually upped my calories in the past week to about 5,000-5,500 and have been getting leaner...The other day I ate 3/4 of a cake and 1/2 a gallon of soy milk (Which I do very irregularly; but I am proving a point)

Cellar Yeti wrote:No matter what I do I can't gain significant body fat. If I fight my body very hard with an insane 4,000+kcal diet I can push it out of it's normal 9/10% body fat range, but if I back off it drops back down. On the same note it's just as hard for me to drop my body fat below that 9/10% range. Adding 1 day of cardio in seems to alter that by 1% or so, more cardio maybe 2%, but my knees start to suffer.

As long as I keep my lifting up, and take a handful of moderate sized walks a week; I stay lean as hell. I just don't understand how slamming my body with thousands of calories does absolutely nothing and all I gain is muscle.

I don't really wanna get ripped six pack abs, it's very hard work and when I try and get leaner I tank my metabolism and end up weak with no energy and shitty lifts; and my body seems to like where it is now.

Here's a few recent pics, 6 months of hardcore training. I'm at about 155# from September 2012, came from 145#.

What the hell does my body do with that excess energy?

Are you srs? You're not "9 - 10%" bf. You're closer to 15%.

I think you're underestimating this drastically and would not dirty bulk unless you wanna end up 20% plus.